To ask what you hate reading in school reports.

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I am a teacher but I have no DC. I am in the middle of writing reports. I never ever copy and paste as that is rude. The nicest comment a parent ever made about my reports was that she could tell it was about her child and that I really knew them.
My question is, what phrases and cliches do you hate reading in your DCs reports?

I like it how are school are honest about the purpose of reports, or record of achievement as they call it. It is about what they have achieved this year, their levels and the new skills they have learnt. It is not the time to find out your child is misbehaving or struggling with something, parents evening should have already informed you of that. that's how it works at our school. to some extent our reports are just a nice round up of the year.

Best of luck to all teachers writing reports now. Both of my children have always read their reports avidly, and are keen to know what they did particularly well. You aren't going to please everybody, but fwiw, my favourite reports have been from teachers who know my son well, and hopefully have something insightful to say about him. One teacher used the phrase "X'x greatest strength is . . . . " which was a nice generic phrase to use, as she was then able to highlight everyone's individuality and give them something positive to take forward to the next year.

I like my DCs report, they get a score for everything, behaviour, punctuality, effort, attitude to the subject, organisation, etc. No comment is required, no reading between the lines, no diplomatic language, just organisation 5/10. Behaviour for learning 4/10 etc, etc, sayss all I need to know, succinctly, without any danger of misunderstanding,

d's age 14 secondary reports are much like that. I agree no reading between the lines!

My son's secondary school reports were very helpful. We got a card every half-term with an effort and an attainment grade for each subject (showing all of these for the whole year, so you could see if anything had changed from the last report). There was a brief comment from the form tutor summing up how he was getting on, and sometimes another brief comment from the head of year or similar senior person. I imagine if there were problems the comments would have been longer, and I do know that they were very concerned about those whose effort grades were not good, regardless of how the attainment grades were.

Twice a year we got a full written report with comments from each subject teacher as well as the effort and attainment grades. As this was an independent school there was no need to comment on National Curriculum levels, thank god, so the comments were brief and to the point, focusing on what he was doing well, what needed more attention and how he behaved in class.

It was all so much more useful than what we got from the state primary school and my daughter's comprehensive school, both constrained by the National Curriculum.

My dcs like to read their reports, I think it is important that they should know how their teacher thinks they are doing. I regretted it last time though.

"ds is not a natural sportsman.... "
"ds will never be an artist but.... "
"ds is not musical.... "

Now all these statements may be true, but I strongly disagree with the philosophy behind them. I expect a music teacher to develop musicality not discover existing talent in 10% of the students and write off the others! The rest of the comments were very positive butyou can be sure ds didnn't remember anything beyond those first statements.

Ds now trots out these statements when asked to try in these subjects. I think these comments really wounded him.

So I would like to remind teachers that students read the reports.

I am a teacher and have just finished writing my reports. I try to personalise them as much as possible, but there are so many things that we HAVE to include and the character limit is so low its really difficult!

Trice, I completely agree with you there. I write reports too (not in a school), and I would never write anything like that for my music students. There seems to be a weird idea that kids are either musical or aren't, and some think lessons are only really there for the ones who 'are'.
Slightly off topic, possibly, but it all comes back to reports.

In primary I do not want a breakdown of each subject, there is very little that you can say about a 5 yr old and RE.(DS got 'listens well to moralistic stories!)
I do not want to know what they have studied this year, I have had the curriculum news, parents evening, seen the books and I talk to them!
I would like to know their particular strengths, their weaknesses and how to help and how they cope socially with peers and adults.
A few short paragraphs about the main points are fine. As it was they were a waste of space, and effort,apart from the last general comment.

A huge bugbear is being told they are too quiet and need to take a greater part in class discussions. I point out they can't just do this to order 'oh Miss X says I need to join in more- I will start tomorrow'! They will do it as their confidence grows and you can't force it!

Yes, totally agree Delphiniumsblue. I am not a teacher botherer, I've never officially complained about anything I've thought suspect or completely off, but this has brought me close.

I am not in the class there with my child and the teacher is! So it is up to the teacher to help the quiet children to pipe up and the over talkative ones to pipe down. It is basic classroom management/control. To bring this up at a parent evening is just saying 'I'm not a good teacher, I have no control, and the loud children run the class (and I am not aware that speaking and listening is a part of the national curriculum)' and 'I don't know what to say to you'.

In my case it isn't a control issue, they are not likely to say much in a whole class situation and the only teachers to really understand it are the ones who were like it themselves. It has been like a breath of fresh air to get ones that understand.
I used to get it as in 'Delphinium would get more out of her lessons if she took a more active part' as if I could just change! I can do it now-will take active part without it bothering me BUT it took me until I was about 24yrs to do it!
I have spent a lot of time explaining that it isn't a problem-they will do it in their own time. The teacher needs to nurture. Drawing attention to it in reports was counter productive and the thing that really sent me back in my shell were all too obvious attempts to draw me out of it! They do need to be subtle about it.

U really hate heard g my child is quiet,like it is a bad thing

I don't like hearing about what DS 'enjoys'. Sounds mean but I know what he enjoys.

Everything is a little too 'fluffy' nowadays. I want to know what he is doing well at, what can we spend more time on to improve etc.

I second that bubalou. As a parent you know what they enjoy- it is just flannel. It has also given us a laugh over the years in what they supposedly enjoy!

We used to get all that 'He should participate more in class discussion' stuff from nursery school all the way to the end of sixth form. It was a lost cause. Our son is one of life's observers. He does join in when he wants to and would always answer a direct question but left to himself he mostly sits on the edge of the group and watches/listens. In a small group when he feels completely comfortable he will lob in devastating oneliners but even at home he doesn't say much, and never has. In this respect he is very like his father and I've had 35 years to get used to that! So when we got those comments on reports and at parents' evening I just ignored them. It did him no harm in the long run as he is now at Oxford and presumably coping perfectly well with his weekly tutorials where he spends an hour with his tutor and one or two other students and has to talk at length about that week's topic. His problem now, there are no reports home any more!

Just tell me the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth. I don't want pages and pages of generic information about what the class has covered. I want to know if his pencil grip is poor. I want to know if he is having friendship problems. I want to know if he is struggling to grasp mathematical concepts or behavioural requirements.

One of the most irritating reports ds1 has ever had was a three page essay on all his "achievements", copy pasted directly from the eyfs expectations website, detailing everything I had taught him the year before he started school and nothing more, leaving me with the impression that his who year in reception had been a complete waste of time. "X can count to 20" bollocks. X can count to nine hundred and ninety nine before he gets stuck, he counts continually, he's obsessed, why are you telling me things I cannot help but know and taught him myself?

Snap AllMimsy! His 6th form tutor even asked me how I thought he would cope at university. I said that he would be absolutely fine- which he was.
A lot of teachers just don't understand the self contained pupil. He wasn't shy and not particularly introverted- just not an extrovert.
OP- note it is not a helpful comment!

trice yy. Comments like that condemn a child for a lifetime and often unfairly. I was shit at pe and the teachers treated me like a pariah. I'm also left handed and was the only one in the class (apart from one boy who pretended not to be cos he knew we'd be singled out), so the teacher often made me stand the other way whilst demonstrating technique but the couldn't be bothered to come round and show me. It wasn't until my 20s that I discovered for myself that I actually enjoy the gym and staying fit. Likewise I heard my primary teacher tell my parents I was tone deaf. Consequently I avoided singing for years until I met my dh who has taught me to sing, I just needed practice and confidence. With no qualification to decide (she wasn't auric teacher btw!) my lovely teacher had no business to pass that judgement and rob me of years of enjoyment.

I was talking to a year 6 teacher the other day who was told his reports are too flowery. Meaning that they should be bullet pointed and not have so much referring to the individual's experience if the term or things they have been doing at home. His response was that they are his class, he spends all day with them and shares their time with home so surely it's relevant so, no, he won't change them but if his head of year wants to waste time making them copy and pasted clones they can go ahead.

I wife retrained as a teacher a number of years ago and she found it’s a total minefield when it came to writing reports. At first she was fairly robust and to the point, most parents liked this even if it made for some unpleasant reading. Sadly, there is a sizeable minority of parents who just can’t accept that maybe their kids are not as wonderful as they think they are, or worse, they know their kids have been ‘playing up’ in class but will still defend them to the hilt out of some misguided notion of ‘family loyalty’. These are the parents who constantly criticised and hen pecked my wife over her feedback rather than perhaps work with her in a constructive fashion to address the issues raised. When she refused to budge on her opinion they turned their ire onto the department head, the headmaster and the governors. It can be very stressful and creates an awful lot of additional work (as if teachers don’t have enough on their plates) dealing with parents who honestly believe that they have been somehow ‘wronged’ or that a certain teacher ‘has it in for them’. It is understandable when some teachers elect to take the easy option of sticking in meaningless platitudes in order to stay out of the firing line.

If you don't like what your child's teacher is saying, then ask them.

You may find that they are told to express views in certain ways, in which case, get off the teacher's back and on to the HT's. They will at least be closer to decision-making process.

We want to know if our children are any good at the things they are doing. We want to know if they have made the amount of progress their ability suggests they could make and also where they rank in the bigger picture.
Therefore if Jonny is trying hard but actually quite thick, it would be good to be told so our expectations are managed.
We also want concrete suggestions for improvement.

I would like to know thw subjects dd is doing well at, the subjects she is struggling with and what she enjoys doing most.
Id want to know whether she is too talkative in a disruptive way) or whether she never contributes.
Id want to know her position in the class in terms of understanding and ability
Id want a positive comment on her personality.
Id want a target for her to aim for next term/year.

I would like comments like manicinsomniac's kids.